


Waning and Waxing

by DaceyBear



Series: Arya x Gendry week [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Tradition, POV Arya Stark, Post-Canon, Post-War for the Dawn, Summer, Unplanned Pregnancy, arya x gendry week 2020, axgweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26358808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaceyBear/pseuds/DaceyBear
Summary: Arya Stark really enjoyed the summer feast held in Winterfell, though the merriment might have had uninteded consequences...
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Edric "Ned" Dayne & Arya Stark
Series: Arya x Gendry week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1868434
Comments: 11
Kudos: 66





	Waning and Waxing

**Author's Note:**

> I want to update [About Oaths and Wolves](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25614373/chapters/62173423), but trying my hand at an Arya POV is proving very dauting indeed. So my mind escaped to this drabble, again prompted very belately by the Arya x Gendry week 2020 (prompt four, "family tradition"). This is set post canon, between [The Acorn Dreams the Oak](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25756126) and [I Got Your Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26098456) I think I may be building an universe here? Well fuck. Lemme know what you think if you will :)

It was there in the godswood she finally shed all doubt.

Like an uncomfortable garment much too stuffy for summer, doubt had cloaked her for the last three days. The first full moon of the summer was starting to wane, the sun shone warmly and the air felt crisp and cool, yet of late it caught in her throat every time she tried to draw it in deep, as if that cloak constricted her lungs. Eddard Stark would always seek the quiet of the godswood to think, it gave her comfort to do the same, to honor the Stark tradition, to honor her father’s gods. He'd come clean Ice in the waters black as night whenever he took a man’s life, she knew. For herself, she'd taken innumerable lives, but that was not the reason she sought the gods. The heart tree watched her back and she watched the water, hoping its eerie stillness could quiet her racing thoughts. _Calm as still water_ was what Syrio used to say, and she had learned to bring to mind this very image, the black pool beneath the heart tree of Winterfell’s godswood, but now even to look at it wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough. Nothing would ever be the same. With dread, she realized she had seldom felt so shaken. _Only this is good, it has to be_. _A blessing_ , she told herself, it was a blessing, truly powerful and beautiful. It felt so out of place, though. _Now was not the time. This is not the time._

The moon certainly looked down on Arya Stark with some pity. _Summer is to blame,_ she concluded. _Or maybe Bran, who ordered the cask of dornish red to be opened for the feast._ The summer feast was held the same day the white raven arrived. Winterfell was well prepared, for Morna Whitemask had warned her lordly brother of the changing seasons long before the bird came. The bountiful spring harvests made the feast a wonderous thing, a beautiful thing; there had been so much glee and joy and pride in everybody’s eyes… and peace, in the land and in her heart. Only a fortnight past, it was, when Arya danced with half a hundred men, ate plump strawberries from the glass gardens adorned with thick sweet cream, drank deep from the dry strong wine she liked so well, and went to her chambers giggly and giddy and had her lover carelessly. _Have I brought this upon myself?_ she enquired herself and the gods. _Have I asked for it?_

She so much wanted to enjoy the feast. Back when spring first returned after the war, Arya left Winterfell before its celebration. _Gendry had been restless to leave for weeks, so we didn’t join in the merriment._ He was anxious to find Acorn Hall again and take account of the toll the war had taken on the children he loved so fiercely. A shiver came creeping up Arya’s legs with this memory; a pleasant shiver, warm instead of chilly. Spring lasted three years, they’d journeyed to the riverlands and back again long ago already, and the days kept growing longer until summer finally came… 

_And with it, you._ Arya felt dizzy. _You._ She looked down and placed both hands over her womb.

"You,” she called aloud, so the gods couldn't take her for a coward. “Are you really there?” _Are you really here?_

There was no answer from within, but around the wind made the leaves rustle against each other, lulling Arya to some calm. The faint sounds of nature were the only hymns the old gods would abide, and for that she was glad. The moon hung huge and bright against the pale blue of morning sky, defiantly showing her face despite daylight, unaware the sun had risen. The moon was waning now and her blood hadn't come, that had to mean she was with child. 

With peace, Arya’s body had found a steady pace; ever since the war had ended her moonblood came with the full moon. _There are but few days each moonturn seed can take root in your belly, Lyra. When you learn them, there's no need for potions._ She could still hear the Merling Queen's lovely liquid voice; the way she had explained to her mermaids why it was there were days she didn’t entertain her trysts and the girls were free to wander the city. _It's unseemly to rely on brews and bitters, they burden us with aches and weaken our desire. A courtesan must be the master of her instrument. Why, our bodies are our instruments. Any woman could, but a whore sure should._ _Like the sea, we’re ruled by the moon. There are tides to our fecundity; flow you're ripe for child, ebb you're as good as barren._ Arya had taken easily to such awareness. Ebb were the days before the bleeding started, after the drenching tides of flow. When she'd been the mermaid, moonless nights were for Him of Many Faces. For Arya Stark the new moon was always trying: she'd be her most wet and wanton, but for a few nights before and aft she’d have to ask Gendry not to spill inside her. They had it in them to make life, a power she hadn't thought to wield.

The black pool looked almost like the black moon. _Did father ever wonder if he was plunging his sword in the moon, when he used these black waters to drown the blood of the dead?_ Arya turned her back to the pool and set a hand upon the bone white trunk of the weirwood. "You gods," she called "I am Arya Stark of Winterfell. I am Eddard Stark's daughter. I am a direwolf. I come to honor our tradition." She wouldn’t allow her voice tremble. "If it's you who burden me with life, grant it that it thrives," she demanded. "Grant me an easy bearing, you gods. Grant this child health and happiness, if you can. Let them know no war." She didn't know if what she asked for was fair, but she did so anyway.

And in asking, she found she could finally breathe deep again, at the least.

* * *

From the godswood, she went to find Gendry.

"The moon is waning," she told him. "I'm waxing." 

She was able to draw in enough air, slowly and deliberately, before she caught his hands and placed them over her belly. His eyes widened immediately, blue as bright as the sky where the moon had taunted her. His pupils were dark and sharp, though, and full of love and determined devotion. _I want our child to have eyes like yours,_ she thought. Then she couldn't see his eyes properly through her tears. _I want our child..._ She was happy to see he did too, happy to see happiness overcome his features when understanding dawned on him, but most of all she was happy for herself, happy that she wanted this. 

Gendry held her tightly against him; he was warm and solid, like always. Strong and gentle, and her lover. The bull, the smith, the knight in dull armor. The father of her child, should she succeed to bring them forth. Arya was suddenly terrified. 

"They'll ask me to get rid of it." 

"They? Arya, who could do such thing?"

"Bran. Sansa. They won't like me bringing a bastard to Winterfell."

"Your family? They'd never…" his voice trailed off. "They love you. They'd never ask it of you," Gendry spoke with all the certainty he could muster, but Arya heard the fear beneath the words. 

"They'll think of it."

"Then we'll leave. Let's go somewhere else, this is ours only, they need not know."

“I won’t _leave._ This is home, I shouldn't run away. I am not afraid.”

“I never claimed to be as brave as you," said Gendry, resolute. “I won’t have anyone pestering you while you carry our child. I won’t. I don’t want no fight. We should leave before you start to show, come back a mother and a father. A year from now, maybe two. What can they do then?”

It was not a bad idea, in truth. “Where would we go?”

“White Harbour, I’m thinking. Wylla is a friend to you, and the Manderlys have hosted us before.”

“It's too close. The word of the pregnancy will sure reach Winterfell sooner than we’d like.”

“Tis true.”

They held each other in silence a moment, and he brought his hands to her face to kiss her. Arya’s mouth twisted into an unbidden smile, an uncommon occurrence she’d allow only Gendry to witness. She knew where they could go.

“Ser Gendry, you might not like what I say next,” she announced. Her lover perked up, jutted out his chin; _try me,_ his pose said. “South, as south as south goes. Let us go to Dorne. I want to have this baby at Starfall.” She had already tried to persuade Gendry to take this trip with her, and he’d denied her time and time again. 

“I guess it’s far enough,” he said through gritted teeth.

Arya Stark had to laugh. “He won’t propose again, I promise you.” 

Edric Dayne, lord of Starfall, had twice proposed to Arya, of house Stark, and twice been spurned. First he did it when she’d just arrived in Westeros again, barely more than a girl. He’d been fresh out of boyhood himself, brave and gallant and honorable, and immensely relieved when she refused him.

The second time was after the war, when Ned accompanied them back to the riverlands on his way to his castle. His proposal had been very different then, almost indecent. “We should marry,” was what he said while they shared remnants of a night in the room Arya occupied at Acorn Hall. Gendry had been livid, and charged into Ned with such force she worried for her friend briefly, but Ned was quick to speak his mind. “Don’t be absurd! I don’t mean to steal the wolf away from you! As if I could even... I mean only… I know no one at Starfall. It would be good to have friends about, if you two would come with me. You could be captain of my guard, Gendry, my lady’s sworn shield. You’d be together, and no one should dare care that the lady of the castle has a paramour, I won’t allow it. I won’t have to bother with finding a lady wife for myself either, so all the better.”

She'd laughed at Ned’s idea, thinking it so very silly. “No one will dare care if the lord of the castle has a paramour himself, Ned, no matter who you marry. It need not be me.” He deflated some, but accepted her refusal with grace, as he did everything. Later he confessed he did not wish to marry someone who would expect of him what he could not give. Arya’s heart filled with sympathy for him. She knew Edric had held onto the fondness he’d developed for Jeyne Heddle when she tended to his wound before the war; she was just an innkeep though, a wench lowborn in the riverlands, he could never marry her, no matter how much the realm had changed, no more than she could marry Gendry as it was. 

_Marry him, sister,_ Sansa’s voice echoed in her head. _Make this right. Your lover is a knight._ A knight, aye, but he had no desire to become a lord. She _could_ marry Gendry, she supposed, only she had no desire to be the lady of any castle, be it Starfall or Castle Cerwin or any of the others Bran could grant her. She wanted to be in Winterfell and nowhere else, she wanted to be with her brothers and sister every day and with her Bull in their bed every night, for the rest of eternity. Only now a child grew in her womb, changing every plan she’d made. 

She put her small callused hands over Gendry’s large strong ones, there on her belly, and sighted. “Starfall, then. I’m glad you agree.”

**Author's Note:**

> [I Got Your Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26098456) depicts the birth of their child! 
> 
> I have one other little ficlet that is written with and Arya POV. It's called [Dawn at Starfall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26193523) and it's about Arya and Gendry naming their baby. I would love criticism on Arya's characterization, if you care to leave a comment either here or there.


End file.
